1. By Susan Ward
Small Business: Canada Expert
THE TOP 10 WAYS TO LOSE
CUSTOMERS
2. Ask anyone in business about their worst customer ever and they’ll be
hard-pressed to tell you about just one.
But ask them about their best customer ever and they’ll probably have
to take time to think about it.
It’s the old 80-20 rule in action; for most people, it’s the unpleasant,
nasty or outrageous that sticks in the memory. The good bits blur.
Which explains why, as business people, we sometimes forget the basic
truth that our customers are our biggest supporters.
hey want to think well of us (and our products and services). They want
us tosucceed.
Many of them start dealing with us in the first place hoping to
become repeat customers. It makes people’s lives so much easier if
they can continue to deal with one butcher or one carpet cleaner.
And all they want from us is for us to meet their expectations – which
means not doing any of the things in the following slides.
Learn how to get and keep customers by reviewing the top ways to lose
them, in reverse order from ways that will merely aggravate some of
your customers through ways that will alienate all of them forever.
WHY NOT KEEP CUSTOMERS INSTEAD?
3. Imagine that you walk into a store selling blinds, wanting to purchase
some blinds for your home. But although several different sales people
seem eager to assist you, none of them seem to know anything about
blinds! Imagine how frustrating that would be – and how long it would
take you to walk out and take your business elsewhere.
Customers, you see, have an expectation that sales people at a
business will be knowledgeable about that business’s products and
services.
You can get around this expectation, however, by eliminating this type
of hand-holding customer service from your business. Several very
successful big-box chains have done this, expecting customers to see
this as a fair trade for lower prices. And online businesses tend to
operate as self-serve businesses.
However, the bottom line is that if your business operations include
a customer expectation that they will be able to interact with
knowledgeable staff, you’d better have some – especially if your sales
depend on it.
#10) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: ENGAGING
POORLY TRAINED STAFF.
4. A coffee shop that only stays open until 3 p.m. A doctor that only
works two days a week. A bakery that closes for a month at a
time so its owners can go on vacation.
Three examples. Three businesses that have lost customers (and
money!) because of restricted hours that seem unreasonable to
prospective customers.
Now most bricks-and-mortar businesses restrict their hours to
some degree. As customers, we don’t expect to be able to browse
through retail stores or go and get our hair cut in the middle of
the night.
But the difference is that we see these as reasonable
restrictions; they make sense to us.
You need to provide customers with what they will consider to be
reasonable access to your products and services. If you don’t,
they’ll find what you’re selling elsewhere.
#9) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: RESTRICTING
YOUR HOURS OF OPERATION.
5. For small business people, the adage “Dress for Success” should
actually be “Dress to Impress (the customer)” because that’s what it all
about – looking like someone that a customer thinks will do the job
well, whether that job is selling people tools to do work on their own
homes or selling people’s homes.
It’s no coincidence, for instance, that Home Depot’s sales associates
all wear aprons; the uniform, suggestive of a carpenter’s tool belt,
makes them look like handy types who know what they’re doing.
And if you don’t look like you would be good at the job, customers just
move on.
So point 1 is that you don’t need to wear a power suit; you need to look
knowledgeable about whatever your expertise is.
Point 2 is that to look professional, you also need to be properly
equipped. I once had a person I was about to hire to prune some trees
ask me if I had a ladder he could use. Uh, no. And you can go away
now. Business image is not just about personal appearance
#8) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: LOOKING
UNPROFESSIONAL.
6. Trying to conduct a simple transaction with some small businesses is like fighting
your way through a blackberry thicket; you end up feeling all scratched up and
wondering why you made the effort.
I personally have seen and/or experienced:
a business where you had to pick up a phone to get buzzed in to the office – except
the phone was around the corner of the building with no signage pointing to it.
a business with no answering service or voice mail, so that when you called the
number the phone just rang and rang. (Learn how to answer your business phone
properly.)
a home business where clients had to walk all through the main living quarters
(obviously occupied by a family with a baby) to get to the tiny office in the
basement. (Do you meet with clients in your home? Read these tips for making your
home business as client-friendly as possible.)
a retail business that only accepted cash. (Just silly; the more payment methods
you offer customers, the more convenient it is for them and the more sales you’ll
make.)
Unfortunately, this is a list that could go on – and I bet you have no trouble adding
examples to it yourself!
Businesses that make it hard for customers to get into the premises, pay for
merchandise, or even make it just about impossible to even contact them at all do
themselves no favours – these are all experiences customers won’t want to repeat.
#7) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: MAKING IT
DIFFICULT TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU.
7. Making it hard for customers to return things marks the halfway
point of this survey of ways to lose customers because while it’s
something that really aggravates customers, it’s not something
they’ll all experience.
You may have (and hopefully do have) lots of customers who will
never feel the need to return anything. For them, it probably
doesn’t matter that to return an item to your business, a
customer needs to have not only a properly dated receipt but be
trying to return the item between 2 and 3 pm on a Friday in a
week with a full moon.
Which is great. Because if they ever do decide to return
something and find out that it’s super difficult or even
impossible, you’ve lost them.
Avoid stress on both your parts and handle returns the right way,
so that your customers go away happy and will be willing to
return to your business and buy again.
#6) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: MAKING IT HARD
FOR CUSTOMERS TO RETURN GOODS TO YOU.
8. I call this the “plenty of fish in the sea” business model. Instead
of trying to institute the kind of customer service that increases
the odds of customers coming back, businesses that follow this
model expend their energies reeling customers in and working
them to make that one-time sale.
The most popular way for these businesses to draw customers in
is through lowered prices, either lower than competitors’ or as
advertised sales.
They literally don’t care if the customer comes back or not; their
theory is that there are lots of other potential customers out
there that they can lure in and do the same thing to.
And don’t think that this business model is limited to retailers;
it’s especially popular among providers of home renovation
services.
I have three words for you, shoddy businesses: word-of-mouth.
#5) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: DOING SHODDY
WORK OR SELLING SHODDY PRODUCTS.
9. It’s interesting how forgiving some customers will be. Even doing
a shoddy job for them once is not enough for them to never give
you a chance to sell to them again in some cases.
With way #4, though, we’re entering the realm of the
unforgivable, otherwise known as “things you just don’t want to
do if you want to keep customers and get new ones”.
Being unresponsive to customers can occur at any stage of
the sales cycle.
An interior designer who overrides a customer’s color choice or a
dog groomer who can’t be bothered to fully answer a prospective
client’s questions about her service are both guilty of ignoring a
customer’s wishes.
Unfortunately, in a world of phone texting and social media,
customers’ expectations are ballooning. If you’re feeling
stretched too thin to be properly responsive to your customers,
it’s time to hire some help.
#4) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: BEING
UNRESPONSIVE.
10. Making a customer feel unimportant is even more unforgiveable
in a customer’s view, which is why it comes in a number three.
Everyone has a need to feel that what they do and say matters.
Feeding this need is the essence of good customer service.
But it’s so easy to fail. When we do things such as not returning
a client’s call in a timely fashion, not giving them our full
attention when we speak (or worse, interrupting them!) or not
providing them with some sort of acknowledgement when they
become “regulars”, we tell them that they’re not important to us,
whether it’s true or not.
Never believe that people will judge you by your words when your
actions say something different.
To succeed at customer service, you need to make every
customer feel special.
A trick to help you accomplish this: Who’s the most important
person in your life? Hold this important person in your mind and
treat every customer the way you would treat him or her.
#3) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: MAKING THE
CUSTOMER FEEL UNIMPORTANT.
11. This isn’t one of the fastest ways to get rid of customers, but
it’s definitely one of the best.
You’ll get away with it for a while because generally people
want to believe the best of one another and because if you
promise a customer, for instance, that you will definitely,
positively have that new floor laid in five days, it will take
them at least five days to discover that you made them a
promise you couldn’t keep.
And then most people will tell themselves that things happen
and you didn’t mean to lie to them and let you tell them the
next lie.
But here’s the rub; they won’t fully trust you to fulfill your
promise the second time – and they’ll be about one hundred
times lesslikely to recommend your business to somebody
else.
#2) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: LYING TO THEM.
12. If you need an absolute never-fail way of ensuring that a customer never darken your
literal or figurative doorway again, this is it – because this is the one thing that a
customer will never forgive.
Customers will make excuses for you – to a point.
Shoddy service? You were having an off day.
No return call? You’re really really busy.
A rip-off? We’re done! (And you might be hearing from my lawyer!)
Now obviously, legitimate business people do not go around deliberately trying to cheat
their customers.
But you have to be careful to avoid the possible perception that your business is trying
to take advantage of customers too. Sales techniques such as upselling may be viewed
this way by the customer, so before you use them, consider their potential effect; they
might not be suitable for your industry.
Customers’ perceptions of prices are probably the main source of sour feelings about
their transactions. All customers are not seeking bargains, but they all expect prices to
be fair.
For instance, if a customer selects an item to purchase on Tuesday that you know is
going to go on sale the next day, you or your staff should point that out to them, leaving
the customer to decide whether they want to buy the item today at its full price or
tomorrow at discount. If you don’t, that customer is going to feel mistreated.
And the customer that feels taken advantage of is the one you won’t see tomorrow.
Remember, the true secret of good customer service is that there is no secret. Offer
quality goods and services at a fair price and treat customers the way you would like to
be treated and those who do business with you will come back again and again.
#1) LOSE CUSTOMERS BY: MAKING THE
CUSTOMER FEEL CHEATED.
